Bizzare crime from Charlotte police files (Nov. 10)

In trouble with the in-law

Protective Papa It's an old cliché that a man might scowl at the thought of his daughter's boyfriend pulling up at the house in a motorcycle, but one Charlotte family is going through a battle right now that seems to be built around this stereotype. A 39-year-old man called police and reported that he was driving his motorcycle near Uptown last week when his father-in-law suddenly swerved his vehicle towards him, causing him to have to slam the brakes and swerve out of the way. The victim told officers he would be seeking a warrant, making things a bit awkward for Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks.

Spoiled Alert A thief made off with $300 worth of food products from behind a grocery store last week, but they'll be in for a rude awakening if they try to consume any of it. Employees at Caton Grocery on Statesville Road told police that someone stole two carts full of food that had been placed behind the store one afternoon last week. The problem is, the food was only back there because it had all expired and employees were preparing to dispose of it.

The Hook Up Management at a Home Depot in east Charlotte last week fired an employee after making the realization that they had been giving away free things for months while working the register. According to the report, the employee did not charge certain customers for holiday decorations, yard work tools, electronic items, bags of popcorn, Halloween candy, candles, powdered donuts and a gate for a fence. All in all, the store took $542 in losses over three months.

Sawed Off The county will have to pay for repairs after someone thought they would take it upon themselves to make improvements to a slide at a local park. Parks & rec employees reported that at some point during the last week of October, someone cut off an eight-inch section at the bottom of the slide, making for a bigger drop off for kids taking the trip down.

Bite Me A 67-year-old woman living at an assisted living center in east Charlotte believes some thief was after her bottom set of teeth, although there's a good chance she just may have lost them. The woman told police she had set her dentures on the dresser beside her bed in September and when she woke the next morning the bottom set were gone while the upper set remained. It's unclear why she waited two months to report the suspected theft, but the woman told officers that she believes either cleaning staff or nursing staff took the teeth.

Bleeding for Attention Neither neighbors nor police were buying it when a 27-year-old woman began to cause a scene in the Villa Heights neighborhood last week. Police arrived to find the woman suffering from a laceration on the inside of her left hand, but "after a thorough investigation" they found that the injury was self-inflicted and she was not assaulted as she had claimed. Also, a nearby resident told officers the woman had threatened her with a knife, but she did not take the threat seriously because "she was familiar with the suspect and her drunken outbursts." Smartly, the police took three knives and some sort of other tool away from the woman before leaving.

Swerves and Crashers Police pulled over a group of three people in a car on N. Sharon Amity Road last week and discovered a large amount of stolen goods in the car, but a look at the list of recovered items might be a hint at why the car was stopped in the first place. Police originally noticed the car because it was "making unsafe movements" and pulled it over after finding that it was displaying fictitious license plates. Among the hundreds of dollars worth of power tools and electronics in the car, police also found a drinking game called "Shoots and Ladders," which might explain all those unsafe movements.

Ghosted One woman took her kids trick-or-treating around their Tuckaseegee Road neighborhood on Halloween night only to return home and find that she had been tricked. And instead of tricking with her by toilet-papering her trees or some similar pranks, this was no juvenile prankster. The woman said that in the 30 minutes it took for her to walk around the neighborhood with her kids, someone stole her car.

Getting Clean Officers responded to an apartment complex in northeast Charlotte and found three men in a vacant apartment looking to trick the local drug addicts. Police opened the door to the apartment and the three men fled, but they caught one. When they searched the suspect, they found seven bags of crack, but it was soon found that the baggies actually contained soap that was packaged to look like crack and prepared for sale.

No Wings A thief in northeast Charlotte found out the hard way last week that Red Bull's marketing campaign, in which little cartoons claim the drink can make you fly away, is not to be taken literally. The man allegedly walked into a Circle K and began filling a pillowcase with cans of Red Bull. He didn't plan so well for his getaway, however, and tried to jump in a cab. He was then stopped by an employee, who may have caused the cab to crash, as it's listed in the report as suffering $2,00 in damage. The suspect then tried to flee on foot, but was apprehended by officers who had just sowed up on the scene.

Threats of the Week A 60-year-old woman was alarmed to wake up to an early morning text from a stranger with a certain set of skills last week. The woman filed a report saying that someone texted her twice at 3 a.m. with the warning, "I am a contract killer if you pay me I will not kill you I will wait on your answer." In an unrelated incident, a 36-year-old woman was asked a question by a suspect who then answered the question herself. The victim told police she received a text saying, "Bitch, why ain't you gonna accept my friend request? Me and my friends are gonna beat your ass again!"

Blotter items are chosen from the files of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty.

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